JUN

20

Bonesaw: The Game

Introduction
The Bonesaw is a phenomenon that has swept a certain engineering school in the North Country of New York. A certain engineering school with a division 1 ECAC hockey team, who just happened to win the ECAC championship for the 2006-2007 season. But enough about that, you want to know about the game.

The Bonesaw served as inspiration for this title, as well as the game “Kirby Squeak Squad” for the Nintendo DS. I bought the game when it came out and went through it until I achieved a 100% completion of the game. It was a really, really good platform game and I thought “Wow, I really want to make a game like this.”

At the time, hockey season was in full swing, and we needed an idea that would take the status of the Bonesaw to the next level. I tossed around the idea for a Bonesaw game a little bit between some friends of mine, and we all agreed that it would be an awesome idea, but I just didn’t know what to do with it. We all had ideas of what the game would be, but I didn’t know exactly how it would play until I played Kirby Squeak Squad and used Kirby’s Fighting power.

That’s when the concept of the game was finally set. I wanted to create an interesting platformer with some puzzle elements here and there, and somehow combine it with the beat-em-up genre. The player would be able to run around the 2d world, and attack enemies with a few regular beat em up attacks, or attack with a melee hockey stick, or a boomerang hockey stick, or the player could summon the Bonesaw as a weapon and use it to destroy everything around them. Well, almost everything.